Redyip

I'm in a very similar situation as you (although I already have a JD and am looking to add a history PhD). After several months of research, my overall impression is that legal history hiring in law schools and history departments look at very different things: Law schools are incredibly credential conscious, and almost always demand a JD from a T14 (preferably a T3) school. All the law school legal history placements I've tracked down over the past 15 years have one of the following degree combos: Yale JD-PhD (this seems to be the default and most common combo), Yale JD-Harvard/Princeton PhD (also quite common), Harvard JD-Princeton PhD (much less common), UPenn JD-PhD (one case), UVA JD-PhD (two cases). That's it. Honestly, it was very disheartening when I first compiled the information, as my JD came from a T25 but not T14 school... History departments hire from a much wider range of backgrounds, but also don't care (or so I've been told) about whether you have a JD. What I mean to say is that, as far as I can tell, a JD from a non T14 school may be worth it for the intellectual experience (I enjoyed my time in law school tremendously), but isn't going to be an asset for job placement.

Thanks, everyone, for the great advice. The point about finding a school that has a good rapport between its law and history faculty is especially important, I think. Largely for that reason, and based on some recent placement information I've gathered, I suspect that Yale and Harvard may be the overall best options for legal history people who hope to enter the law teaching market, but Princeton, Columbia, Stanford are certainly terrific schools as well. How to get into any of those places, however, is a different story altogether...

An additional note: the "conflicting advice" I've been getting concerns whether to apply outside of some "top-10" or so range of history departments, based on their overall reputation, and not merely their strength in my specific interests. I'm somewhat interested in teaching in law schools some day (teaching legal history in law schools would nonetheless require a history PhD), and would at least like to keep that option open for the moment. A few of my advisors have told me that getting a law teaching job requires a degree from a recognizable "top" history department, and that I shouldn't bother with less prestigious schools even if the "fit" is excellent. Others have disagreed. Of course, considering that I don't even know which schools have faculty who may be able to advise me--beyond the three I mentioned above--thinking about this may be premature.

Hi everyone, I've been following this forum for a few months and have found the discussions very informative. If any of you have a moment, I'd like to seek some advice on choosing target schools for the next application season (i.e., next Fall). I'm currently a law student who, being somewhat disinterested in practicing law per se, am looking to enter academia as a legal historian--there are a couple of reasons behind this that I won't bore you with, but raw interest in the subject is by far the most important one. I have reasonably strong academic credentials from college and law school, including some fairly extensive academic research and writing experience, but have gotten very conflicting advice on where to apply, largely because my conceived field of research may be a bit, well, odd. Any wisdom you might care to share would be deeply appreciated. I'm hoping to work on comparative "early modern" East Asian legal history--16th to 19th Century China, Japan and (to a lesser extent) Korea, with a particular focus on contract, torts, and related criminal law issues. From what I gather, this is a very unusual topic, and therefore finding the right school "fit" seems rather difficult. My knowledge on this is not very detailed, but people have suggested that I look at Columbia (Zelin and Gluck), Yale (Perdue and Botsman), and Harvard (Alford and Gordon). Needless to say, these are all extremely selective schools, and hence I was hoping to garner some additional suggestions and/or information from this forum. Many thanks!